Baker vs. Bloggers - a Tinge of Hypocrisy

I’d like to thank you all for your insights and comments, from the journalism grads and students applauding the piece, to the authors and proponents of blogs with questions, concerns and beefs.

God, Baker. This is fucking lazy. You immediately frame the article in a “only real journalists get it” way and that has me instantly tuning out what you are about to say because I am already reading it a condescending tone. This is elementary writing and maybe something you should have picked up in an English class or twelve on your way to a journalism degree.

This includes the blogger who wrote last week’s Ibanez item, one Jerod Morris, who keyed a private, lengthy email to me that was thoughtful, polite and truly inquisitive in nature. Morris is standing his ground, as he has throughout this controversy

So would you say he is being accountable for his words then, Geoff?

The fact that so many bloggers are now insisting in public that their work is not meant to be taken as seriously as "real journalism’’ shows me they do not understand the dangerous waters they are treading.

I am curious, how many bloggers have been sued under libel compared to journalists?

Here’s a primer on U.S. libel law and how it relates to blogging, in case you’re interested. It should be required reading for any blogger in this country.

This is a good link. I paused in my reading of Baker’s article to browse it and frankly, I am left again with the overwhelming notion that there is zero, zero, way that you could interpret what Morris wrote as defamation/libel. Morris never made a statement of fact on Ibanez and PEDs.

So, when Morris writes a headline to his piece that states: "The Curious Case of Raul Ibanez: Steroid Speculation Perhaps Unfair, but Great Start in 2009 Raising Eyebrows’’ it would, in theory, be up to the courts to decide whether Morris showed regard for the truth if sued by the ballplayer.

For the umpteenth time, I think everyone who is reacting to this story the way Baker has is reacting to the headline and not the article itself.

But then, he raises the steroids talk, which throws his whole thesis into the realm of subjective, rather than objective, work.

No it doesn’t, Geoff. People are able to distinguish the two in the same article. We’re not retards.

So, why is Ibanez "fair game’’? Because he’s older and having a better-than-average season? So is Ichiro, putting arguably his best campaign since 2004 together. And even if Ichiro was only performing as consistently as he ever has, there have been players who perform consistently over a period of years that took steroids the whole time. So, what’s to stop us from lumping Ichiro in with the guilty? Sounds preposterous, doesn’t it? Well, not according to the logic of those defending Morris.

This is misrepresenting what people defending Morris are saying. And it is reckless for you Geoff to characterize this being the only logic of those coming to his defense. The point is not about some people being fair game and others not, if anything, that’s a point I’ve only seen raised by “journalists”.

And to me, where you start pointing fingers at individuals and naming them next to the word "steroids’’ that crosses the line.

Calling what Morris did “finger pointing” is a gross misrepresentation.

Now, this may seem like the same thing to a lot of you, but there are important differences. The most obvious is that no individual was singled out. Believe me, this was intentional. There are ways to approach topics like this, to hint at stuff that may or may not have been going on, but it requires subtlety, not a sledgehammer.

More high and mighty tone. It weakens your argument, Geoff.

I don’t know of a serious newspaper that would allow a rookie-type, twentysomething reporter to go at a topic like Ibanez and steroids and get it published with the language that was used in the Morris headline and text.

Who cares, Geoff? Seriously. Who cares? Blogs are not newspapers. We get it. I don’t understand why the newspapers don’t get it.

My second answer would be: Jerod Morris is not Rick Reilly.

And Morris wrote for a small blog and Reilly writes for ESPN.com, among other large media entities. This comparison strikes me as deriding celebrating after a win in a rec league game because “you’re not a professional athlete”

Who was Jerod Morris accountable to before he published his blog?

His readers.

But I don’t want to live in a world where the gossip of the day can be spun by anyone into accepted, printed fact with no recourse. We’ve been heading down that road at breakneck speed for a while now and somebody, somewhere will have to find the brakes.

Bullshit, Geoff. This is alarmist and trite. The medium changes, but the readers still decide how much popularity any outlet eventually has and if you constantly spin gossip into facts, people will eventually wise up and stop reading you.

“Tonight on ‘Outside the Lines,’ we’ll hear from Ken Rosenthal on the controversy surrounding a blog post insinuating that Ichiro can only add value when surrounded by established American veterans who are able to channel his asian energy into productive, baseball-related tasks and away from robotics projects and mathematics. "

Baker: “That’s really not what the post said at all, and I think everyone’s misunder…”
Rosenthal: “THIS ISN’T ABOUT MISUNDERSTANDING, THIS IS ABOUT DECENCY! WHERE IS YOUR DECENCY!”

Reporter: “Ken Rosenthal absolutely destroyed a novice blogger who strayed from talking about things he actually knows about – like stars wars action figures and cheetohs – and got caught speculating about the supposed inferiority of Japanese players.”